One of the major complaints about Microsoft’s current operating system (OS), the much maligned Windows Vista, is its requirement to run on PCs with decent specifications. It can be much slower running applications than Windows XP; Vista is not significantly more secure than its aging predecessor either, although it has that very annoying ‘cotton wool’ bloody-mindedness towards security warnings.
It’s also not scalable enough, despite the 101 different versions of Vista released by Microsoft in 2006, to run on netbooks/Ultra Mobile PCs/mini-notebooks. This has forced the Redmond company to license XP to netbook manufacturers like Dell, Asus, and Acer, even though mainstream support for the OS ended in April.
Enter, Windows 7.
Ever since Microsoft released a limited beta test period at the start of 2009, the successor to Vista has gained a lot of positive feedback. The OS’ Release Candidate launched last month, ahead of a pre-Christmas release of the full package, and that too has been largely well received. Windows 7’s scalability between versions will also allow it to replace XP on notebooks right up to performance desktops, allowing Microsoft to truly put the 8-year old operating system out to pasture in the coming years...and put Vista (or ‘Old Yeller’ as I like to think of it) out of its misery behind the barn. But is it a viable replacement for XP users that don’t have the latest Intel Core 2 Quad processor, 8GB RAM, and 1GB SLi GPU from nVidia?
Hence the reason for this blog, which I'll update as I get to grips with the OS running on an aging laptop that meets the minimum specs outlined by Microsoft. Originally the laptop ran XP, but after formatting the hard drive and installing the Windows 7 Release Candidate, both it and I are ready...just about.
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